What Does Psalm 80:16 Mean in the King James?
It is burned with fire, it is cut down: they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The vine’s end is not only burning and cutting: “perish” also carries the Hebrew sense of being lost.
THE MEANING
What was planted is now burned and cut down; at the rebuke of God’s face, they are lost. The verse holds the ruin in full view: fire, cutting, and the loss that follows.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being planted does not make something untouchable by ruin.
THE ROOT
יֹאבֵדוּ
yōʾbēdû
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
Be lost, perish, or go missing.
The verb translated “perish” comes from a root that also means “be lost.” The ending is more than destruction: the verse holds together perishing and becoming lost under the rebuke of God’s face.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōbēd: Lost, gone astray, or perishing.
אָבֵד
This form shows how the root can describe both an ending and the state of being lost.
ʾăbēdāh: Loss; something that has gone missing.
אֲבֵדָה
It makes the root’s language of loss visible in a noun, deepening what “they perish” holds here.
שְׂרֻפָה
śərufāh
GROWS FROM
שרף
ś-r-p
Burn or consume by fire.
The word for “burned” shares its root with “seraph,” a word for a fiery being. The verse’s consuming fire and the name of the fiery beings belong to the same Hebrew word family.
ALSO GROWS
śārāf: A fiery being; a seraph.
שָׂרָף
The shared root links the vine’s burning with the word English readers may know from “seraph.”
śərēfāh: Burning or a fire that consumes.
שְׂרֵפָה
This noun keeps the emphasis on fire as an active consuming force.
THE PATTERN
A planted life can be exposed to judgment, severed, and brought to an end in fire.
And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down:If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned.THE THREAD
For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.Both verses use the same Hebrew root for “perish,” which also means “be lost.” Psalm 1 places that loss on a way, making the burned vine here read as more than physical destruction: its way forward has vanished.
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